RE: Importance of "W" for Mac68/TOS

[Tamminen Eero <t150315@students.cc.tut.fi>]

> There are tons of desktop replacements and Unix shells which support long 
> filenames, so where's the problem???? And where's the point to write for an 
> experimental windowing system, when we have at least two properly working 
> GEM based multitasking systems?

Well, AFAIK the only *free* multitasking friendly GUIs for MiNT are:
	- XaAES, AES 'emulator' (buggy and dead)
	- OAesis, likewise
	- X, needs 8 megs if you want it for other than running
	  things remotely. Also very slow and runs only in monochrome
	  resolutions.
	- Mgr, I know only of one, old as metusalem, port of this.
	  Wasn't much impressed with it.

W and Kay Roemer's Wetscape take together (much) less than 1MB.
And even though Wetscape is barely HTML v1 and has other quirks,
it doesn't take even half of the memory CAB does (and Wetscape
includes code for widgets like fileselector etc. (MiNT doesn't
have shared libraries).

Downsizes:
	- Doesn't support color (almost not at all). Works
	  on all interleaved bitmap resolutions (like standard
	  ST ones) though.
	- Not compatible to anything.
	- Missing some important functionality.
	- Very little programs (no desktop, filemanager,
	  text editor...). There are a couple of basic games.

The main use for W would be for folks who don't use any GUI,
just MiNT/shell, but would still like to do some graphics stuff now
and then. GEM can't be shutdown and most AES stuff just hogs
CPU. W doesn't.

Also, although Juergen Lock's virtual consoles are fast and nice,
you can't do cut and paste between then (what about 'screen'?).
That (and resizing) would be the only reasons why one would prefer
W terminal (yes, virtual consoles text output is that much faster
at least on a plain ST).


Oh, and btw. W is dead easy to program for! In case you want
to test out some throw-away graphics code. If you want later
to run it eg. on X, I have made a simple Wlib->Xlib library :-).


	- Eero

P.s I have myself now x86-linux. It would be nice if somebody
of you would look into W MiNT stuff. MiNT part is missing
palette setting routines. Linux/Svgalib and 68k-linux have
those. I'll unpack the source on:
	http://www.modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~puujalka/bin/W/packets/

Take a look at files in:
	w1r4pl0/server/graph/*.c